Finn Jones has never seemed to see it that way. In 2017, he responded to critics of the series in an interview with Vulture, calling the outrage “unjust” and “unfair” and saying, “Don’t get angry and start a mob when you don’t even — you haven’t even seen the show!” When it finally did premiere, “Iron Fist” was met with a largely negative response. The show’s first season has an abysmal 20% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and writer and critic Karen Han even penned a /Film article that proclaimed: “‘Iron Fist’ is a much better show if you remove Iron Fist.”
While Jones now acknowledges some of the show’s shortcomings, especially when it comes to its widely panned first season, he still tells Geekscape he would return to the role, throwing out the idea for a “Heroes For Hire” plot that would also bring back Jessica Henwick’s Colleen Wing. He even goes so far as to call billionaire Rand — or, perhaps, his own turn as the character, it’s not quite clear — an underdog. “There’s something about the underdog, y’know?” he tells the podcast. “I love the underdog narrative. I love the ability to prove someone wrong, and I want to prove all those motherf****** wrong.”
Jones continues, “I know I have it in me and I know I can give the Danny Rand performance that fans want and that is possible.” For anyone who’s been attentively following the conversation around the “Iron Fist” controversy for years now, these comments seem optimistic yet misguided at best. At worst, they show that Jones may not have taken much criticism about the story’s inherent racism to heart.